More Shahed drone attacks on Odessa today.

As an aviation enthusiast and one-time experimental aircraft builder, I did some research on this thing.

It is actually an ingenious design, using off-the-shelf commercially-made parts readily available from China, that doesn’t give a damn about the sanctions.

It has a very light (35lb), all aluminum, fuel-sipping (3-4 gallons an hour) 50 horsepower two-cycle engine, the Beijing DE-550, which is a copy of the German-made Limbach 550.

It is attached to a honeycombed fiberglass fuselage with plastic wings and nose cone. The flight and control systems, like the servos that move the control surfaces, are from a Radio-controlled hobby airplane kit.

Along this same line, I am guessing the electronics controls and programmable’s are based on a rasberryPI, they don’t have to be sophisticated. It is built for a one-way trip, so it doesn’t have to be robust.

There are pictures of them being launched with a large bottle-rocket, or on wheels.

Including the engines, which they obviously buy in bulk at a discount, they probably have less than $15,000 each, including labor in these things. If it were a US Defense acquisition project, they would likely be $250,000 each.

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